Historian, Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

We cannot know what will happen on Thursday. There are huge differentials in opinion polls. We now know that the pollsters’ samples, demographically weighted to reflect the population in terms of age, geographical spread, and past voting intention, return very similar results. What differs is the extent to which they apply the additional filter of judging likelihood to vote, not by people’s declaration on this point, but by historic records reflecting the fact turnout is much higher among the elderly. That in itself has thrown a spotlight on the massive age differential in voting. The Tories are extremely dependent on pensioners. It is precisely the same age group that supported Brexit and opposed Independence.

There has been some drop in Tory support among the elderly in the election, but only in line with the drop in the general population. The abandonment of the triple lock, the dementia tax and the end of winter fuel allowance have not particularly dented the loyalty of the Tory grey army.

So if younger people want to stop the Tories, they have to get themselves to the polling booth at all costs. As for campaigning, almost certainly more effective than attending rallies or sticking leaflets through strangers’ doors, would be to sit down and have a real heart to hear with elderly family members and acquaintances.

A quick disclaimer. I realise there are a lot of wonderful people of pension age who are not Tories. I am not attacking the elderly, I am stating a plain and undisputed fact about voting breakdown by age.

It is also the case that there has been a very definite trend away from the Tories for the last month, and there is little evidence to suggest that has stopped. So today’s polls are not how opinion will stand on voting day.

But this election has been a great victory already, whatever the result.

Firstly, a genuine alternative has been put to the electorate in England and Wales for the first time in a generation. And Jeremy Corbyn has proved beyond doubt that left wing policies are popular. Refusal to endorse nuclear weapons, aggressive foreign policy, privatisation and austerity are indeed popular. With New Labour triangulating themselves right into the neoliberal establishment consensus, English and Welsh voters had no opportunity to express a radical view since 1983.

The careerist Blairites who had taken over the Labour Party argued that it would be electoral suicide not to adopt all the Tory policies. NHS privatisation, utility privatisation, PFI, benefit cuts, Trident, attacks on foreign countries; these are what the public want, said the Blairites.

Corbyn is now proving that was a lie.

Indeed, of all the opinion poll findings which give results such as strong public support for renationalisation of the railways, that which drives the stake deepest into the hearts of the Blairites and Tories alike is the YouGov poll on foreign policy. People are not stupid, and by a two to one majority people believe that our wars abroad cause terrorism here. That is why the furious Tory attack, that to explain is to support, bounced off.

A clear majority of people oppose our recent wars in Muslim lands.

It is precisely those of Corbyn’s views which the entire mainstream media, the Tories and the Blairites consider unacceptable, and which fall well outside the Overton window, which are popular. That explains why the attacks do not work. The victory of this election is that those popular views have been expressed widely, after years of being banished methodically from the airwaves.

If May wins, she will almost certainly not have the huge landslide she expected. Her honeymoon period is well and truly over and she now has a very negative public image. That is going to get worse as we are heading into a Brexit recession and a house price crash. I agree with every word of this extremely important article from Will Hutton. May’s support is almost entirely from hard Brexiteers who are going to crash the economy to satisfy their racism. That will quickly appear a very bad idea.

A May government with a small majority, possibly dependent on Ulster Unionists, running a disastrous policy and becoming ever more unpopular, is the best outcome the Conservatives have left in terms of retaining power. All the media’s horses and all the media’s men are not going to be able to put together again the ludicrous image they had constructed of Theresa May as a great leader, which fell apart at the very first public scrutiny.

If Corbyn comes to power, he will almost certainly have to be supported by the SNP, who I am proud to say have an even more radical platform than Labour, including scrapping Trident and reversing all benefit cuts. How many Blairites would defect to the Tories rather than support a Corbyn government with SNP support is an interesting question. But remember, most Blairites would sell their mother for a ministerial limousine. Corbyn’s position against the Blairites has been immeasurably strengthened by this campaign, and win or lose, his party leadership is safe if he wants to keep it. If John Woodcock etc. wanted to take themselves off to form a second Tory Party that would be no bad thing at all.

Of course I want to see May defeated and out of office, because Tory policies actually kill people. But I will not be too disappointed by a pyrrhic Tory victory.

A renewed Tory government will quickly become extremely unpopular as it flails in Brexit negotiations. It will be more right wing and authoritarian than ever, because those are May’s instincts when in trouble. As a Scottish nationalist, I have no doubt at all that the clarity of the choice between a hard right Brexit led Tory government, and Independence, can have only one result. Whether May or Corbyn is in No.10, I am confident this is the last Westminster election I shall have to endure.

If May sneaks back, Corbyn can continue with the work of recasting the Labour Party on popular and radical lines. Most importantly, boundary changes will give the chance for reselections to ditch a large portion of the Blairite rump. Still better would be a change of rules for mandatory reselection, where again the SNP shows Labour the way. And by next time Corbyn must face down the disgustingly blinkered and selfish attitude of the GMB, who love getting fat pay packets for working on weapons of mass destruction, and Corbyn must get a policy on Trident which he can defend without twisting himself in knots – again following the SNP.

If May gets back in, her government will collapse by 2020. Even a “defeat” on Thursday would not be the end, but just the start of a new dawn for popular radical politics,

This slightly longer version Ken posted last night was better, the terrible song at the end went on longer.
Also hope nobody minds me posting this from last night…I thought Owen Jones was good, he really got his point across well, there were several similar clips from the same BBC discussion.https://mobile.twitter.com/owenjones84/status/871840407344295936

Diane Abbott strikes again with another car crash interview in which she tried to blag her way through and ended up flat on her face. Again. I’m not being racist or misogynistic . She may be a good constituency MP but if she is too lazy to know or ay least try to learn her own brief then she’s a liability. The media now all over the latest gaffe and now Abbott has pulled out of a debate later today.

This ridiculous game of quizzing politicians about the minutiae of every single policy detail is dishonest. The purpose of policy is to outline what is desired and then investigate how budgets can be formulated to that end. Do you think Clement Attlee decided we would revolutionise the nation with free education and the NHS and then be required to show, ledger for ledger, every accounting detail required?

Of course not. A policy begins with a vision. That vision is then implemented with compromises on the way about what is desired and then what is possible. If politics is to become a permanent exercise in chartered accountancy almost no radical policy would ever have been implemented.

The interview with Murnaghan wasn’t like that Leonard. It was on a report Abbott claimed she’d read only on closer questioning it definitely looked like she hadn’t. It was awful. I’m sorry, I just can’t be doing with her complacency. Corbyn has made such progress and yet Abbott screws up constantly.

I have seen the transcript of that interview and it reads better than it broadcasts. And that’s because the broadcast has inflections and a tone that undoubtedly WAS an attempt to corner her, no matter what. Actually that report was published quite a long time ago and it was not commissioned by Labour central office, but by Sadik khan. Many of its findings are frankly either blindlingly obvious or rather shallow.

I agree that Abbott does tend to fumble especially when she is aware a trap is being set (which this, again, undoubtedly was). It’s perfectly ok to expose hypocrisy (see Amber Rudd) or failings in policy (see T May) but that is completely different from quite deliberately conducting an interview that is set up in advance to fail. There are many other studies, discussions and debates about the subject under discussion and Harris’s enquiry is just one of them.

I do take the points you make Leonard and appreciate your response. We have been seeing many traps being set. We knew that would happen. Look at how Corbyn has coped with them . Diane just doesn’t seem to have prepared for them. She’s not good at blagging her way out of trouble as the interview with Murnaghan showed. And the full transcript might not be as bad but it’s the footage that is all over the news. That’s what people see. The report may have been commissioned by Khan but it was less than a year ago. It concerned London. Diane is a London MP. Also shadow HS so surely it should have warranted more than a passing interest from her. Doesn’t it bother her how it all looks? Doesn’t she care about her own image or the idea of all those female coven members in the PLP laughing at her? Doesn’t she want to show them up?

It may not be an accurate image of Diane that we see Leonard but I really do think she is personally to blame for not being sharper and on her toes at such a crucial point.

Disingenuous to highlight these people like Jeremy Corbyn, or Tony Benn who have either changed their minds or opposed entry into the EEC/ EU.

You cannot discount the facts as they are-namely that having been in the EU for forty years, that changes things. Separation is much more difficult than if we had never joined. I thought it was wrong to join, and voted against in 1976.
However it is worth remembering that the UK at that time was economically in the doldrums. There were large nationalised industries such as Coal and Steel, and the state was deeply involved in unlikely areas such as car manufacture, in order to avoid inflaming strikes and dissent and avoid redundancies in a workforce accustomed to job security.
The ‘social contract’ was in the process of being written only for it to be written off within a couple of years. I worked in the the oil industry at the time and it was not possible to get British manufactured steel suitable for the applications, or it was not reliable, or was on a very long, impractical, lead time.
At the time the EEC seemed like a very good idea as it seemed reasonable to assume that there would be many benefits, being enjoyed by the then relatively small number of participants.

I’ve come on here specifically to comment on those aspects of your support for a Corbynite approach to foreign policy and terrorist threats here in the UK.

I’m of the left too Craig and do not support neoliberalism of any kind. I don’t think that Dr Usama Hasan of Quilliam does either. His suits look fairly worn and unfashionable. What is it in the message from decent ex islamist radicals like Dr Hasan in Quilliam that you can’t take on board? I’m aware of the fact that they seem to have been in receipt of rather less government money than the MCB. The liberal and non liberal left are often with islamists like Moazzam Begg of Cage and against people like Dr Hasan in a way that I find nauseating to behold.

Violent islamism has a long and complex history and shares many features with European fascism. It is more difficult to combat than European style fascism because it is transnational in nature and shares much of the methodology if not the ideology, of revolutionary communsim.

Osama Bin Laden was losing ground with muslim support for his islamist project prior to 9/11. He changed tack and decided that if muslims worldwide could not rally to the cause willingly they would be pushed into it by the harsh measures of tough love in the form of the provocation of the US . This was a tactic that had already been foreshadowed by islamist scholars decades earlier. Sadly President Bush was not clever or principled enough to either understand what he was facing or maintain the moral high ground against it. It must be stressed that the power of manipulation has always had the upper hand with the drivers of violent islamism. They are in a win. win situation where any signs of weakness in a muslim majority country can allow them to begin insurgencies and then they can capitalize in propaganda terms from intervention and non intervention. Wherever in the world muslims die, the propaganda will be that it is ultimately the doing of the west. We are the crusaders and the devil in a morality play that is ultimately for their own people.

Fascists, clerical and non-clerical are hard on their own people. Sacrifice and suffering for the greater good is central as is a hatred of the other and a grotesquely disproportionate sense of grievance. For an ounce of pain they well and truly wield a ton of grief. Of course people like this are going to tell you they are killing because of the actions of the west. Those in their own communities who are dying in their droves because they are not the right type of muslim are also co-opted as being part of the west in this elimination of the grayzone. The choice they would like to see sunni worldwide face is one of being a fundamentalist supporter of clerical fascism or an apologist for western power with no space in between.

We could take a little detour here and look also at the part revolutionary Iran played in the development of sunni islamism if we had the time. Enough to say that salafism was inward looking in the kingdom prior to refuge being given to Iranian revolutionaries and the MB. The cross pollination of these was critical to the development of Al Quada and IS. The overthrow of Mossadegh was fully supported by the fundamentalist revolutionaries of Iran and they are shameless in their constant referencing of it without a mention of their own substantial role. The current power struggle in the ME was also triggered to an extent by the Ayotollah Khomeini who challenged the Saudi monarchy as soon as he ascended to power and warned them that the Iranian model was coming and that their monarchy was not fit to be emirs to the muslim world. Of course the Kingdom was going to react to this threat. The Ayotollah was a stupid fanatic who lit a fuse without even considering that it might ultimately lead back to his own house. American foreign policy during Obama’s time was an excruciating struggle to be neutral in this ME power struggle. You can’t have people in foreign policy that don’t and can’t know any of this. You may as well get in a bunch of sixth formers from the nearest secondary as Corbyn and his cabinet.

Military intervention may not be the answer, but you are a fool to believe that it is the driver. The western leftist who believes an islamists account of the drivers of his actions is as foolish as a psychiatrist who takes a manipulative sociopath’s explanations for his behaviour at face value. Neither situation usually ends well for anyone concerned.

Prior to the Iraq war there were no terrorist attacks here either since the NI women and men of peace. Blair’s the one that got us into this melee and Theresa is now determined to turn us into a regular target for the ‘manipulated/ murderers’.

Ian, my dissertation in 2001 was on the war on terror and it did start before the Iraq war. We are now in a new phase were young educated, bored and easy to influence young people without anything to do, get radicalised.

What is new today, is the connivance of international satellite providers who have refused to pinpoint the terror videos that are influencing our youth directly from their fields of influence. With a little support from them, they have all the coordinates to give, these video’s can be blocked or, with cooperation could be taken out 20 minutes later.
Instead they hide behind lawyers. Governments in the western world could do much more if they weren’t so shackled to Saudi and Qatari money, if we had not given in to arms deals, if these sponsors of terror had not been such prominent London land owners and financial operators.

I can recommend Prof. Nafeez Mosadeque’Ahmeds book’ The War on Freedom’ which details what was going on during the early 1990’s, when Osama was the CIA’s bagman in Afghanistan. I knew he would never be captured alive.

When the dust settles to reveal the ‘history’ of our present moment, I doubt that many will be revered over much. But people like Pilger, Cook, Ahmed, Assange, Manning, Chomsky and our dear Murray among so very many others deserve to be noted as those who, whatever they all lost through a devotion toward truth, honesty and fairness, gained only what we all have gained. I mean it.

Unfortunately and especially given the quality of your education, all you have is a the straw man logical fallacy. Rather inelegantly done too. I’m a common oik, one grandfather was a clog maker, one grandmother worked in the cotton mills, I’ve been relatively impoverished all my life and I’m not university educated as you might gather from my poor grammar, syntax and spelling. If even I can see the relative lack of substance in your argument then you can too. It’s almost as if you’re knowingly trying to hi-jack the real discussion by forcing it to respond to your straw man.

You depict the ‘left’ whomever they might be as apologists for ‘radical Islam’; granted, you are very careful to give a few different broad brush categorisations of who these notional ‘leftists’ might be and bolster your case with an apparently wider historical perspective. If anyone reading your critique swoons at all this, they might be forgiven for not noticing the obvious.

You have presented a different argument to that which Corbyn is making and you have alluded to other ‘leftists’ you identify as also making the same argument. Then you set about proving that this argument they haven’t made is wrong with a carefully abbreviated history. Fine you’re ‘right’ as far as that goes.

So a question, why is the well documented Saudi funding of Wahhabist terrorism a non issue for you?

Very well said indeed Fi. Though as you can see, you won’t find much sympathy here to looking at things rationally in their completeness and wholeness. Everything is put down to Iraq, admittedly a disaster, although it’s not as if the clock began with Iraq.

An excellent, informative and well-thought out post which tells a few home truths (eg about Iran, Moazzam Begg and “Cage”) and which will not easily be contradicted, I suspect. Always good to read posts from people who have done their research and appear to know what they’re talking about.

Don’t really know where to begin in this herd of elephants in the room. You seem to be unaware or deliberately ignore that Al Qaeda had its origin in US support of Saudi sponsored Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight the USSR. This support has apparently directly ceased after 9/11 but in fact seems to continue in the support of Al Nusra Front, which is really AQ in Syria, under the guise of support for the ‘moderate rebels’. It is so well documented that these rebels were really a conduit for the surreptitious passage of weapons to Al Nusra and until today, the FSA continues to share battles and occupied space with Al Nusra. So we have AQ directly supported by the so called coalition of the willing. Then you also seem to be unaware that at the beginning of the Syrian revolution there were clear messages sent by Western Governments that it was good to fight the Syrian Government. This message did not go unnoticed and droves of young Muslims who were ‘radicalised’ found it easy to make the journey to fight the SG by travelling unhindered to Syria via Turkey. The collusion between Turkey and IS became so embarrassingly obvious after the Russian intervention where convoys of thousands of tankers were destroyed on thier way to Turkey. This was the beginning of the decline of IS and despite several years attempts of US,UK and others to bomb IS, it flourished until the porous border between Turkey and IS in north Syria was finally severed by the SAA. This was preceded by a valiant attempt by Turkey to invent another rebel alliance called ‘the Euphrates Shield’ which sort of took over from IS, not through bloody fighting, but in many cases through withdrawal of IS. I have not even mentioned what happened in Iraq as that is another long story.
Anyway, concern about these terrorists who were allowed to travel from many western european countries to train and fight in Syria has now become a concern because IS is losing and these fighters are slowly finding thier way back to the west.
There are other elephants to ponder. There is a long history of support for the Muslim Brothers in Egypt by UK well documented and recounted by Mark Curtis. There is Libya whereby the UK government happily let members of LIFG to travel back to Libya to fight Gaddafi .

So in short the left does not in any way defend the islamists, they may defend ordinary Muslims being tarred with the same brush as the terrorists. They are also against the hypocrisy of the clandestine support for these terrorist organisations, either by surreptitiously arming them, or by ignoring the collusion of our allies, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia with these terrorists.

Finally It is so strange that you should mention Musadagh and not condemn the fact that this democratically elected leader was overthrown by UK and US. The Islamist revolution of 1979 had nothing to do with this but was a backlash against the Shah whom we very strongly supported and failed to see that the democratic deficit caused by our dictator ally was easily filled by the clerics.

“Wherever in the world muslims die, the propaganda will be that it is ultimately the doing of the west.”

Here is someone who should know?

“RS: [omission] Well, we’re back with Ray McGovern, who spent 27 years in the CIA, talking about the deep state. You got close to Robert Gates, and he worked for you when he was on his way up, right?
RM: That’s correct.
RS: OK, and he wrote a very interesting book. And in that book, he said the Afghan problem, and the problem of the whole Muslim world, really, started with our luring the Russians—the Soviets—into Afghanistan. . . .
we now know from Zbigniew Brzezinski’s famous interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, he was in the Carter administration and he said: We lured the Soviets in there because we wanted to give them their Vietnam. And in defense, he said: So what’s a few riled-up Muslims? We ended the Cold War because the Soviets ground to a halt in Afghanistan. Well, a few riled-up Muslims is what the war on terrorism is all about, and it’s shaped the whole world for the last 20 years.”http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/former_cia_analyst_ray_mcgovern_cias_history_faulty_intelligence_20170428

The government, MI5/6 and the MSM are fully complicit. If exposed, Theresa would be dead in the water and open to indictment for aiding and abetting terrorists. The evidence is indisputable. Nu Labor, and the Tories later, did everything that the Oded Yinon plan required. That is – decimate the Arab nations. We are so lame.

No doubt there is much more to come. Any honest person would rip out the organs of mendacity that so infect the British state. Any sane person would realize that by voting for any of these cretins you merely legitimize them.

How can it be that a former British Ambassador is not aware of the generality of the evil that has metastasized throughout the British state. Could it be that the infantile spewing of racist allegations against anyone and everyone is merely useful cover for diverting attention away from where the criminals reside and practice their nefarious trade craft.

Jeremy Corbyn is standing for election in the UK. The UK does not have a Presidential system. Therefore the question is not what Corbyn’s position is, it is the position of the Party that he leads that is relevant.

There are so many people with blood soaked hands that no-one has any intention of being exposed by Corbyn. That the UK is a basket case of seething idiocy and corruption is evidenced by the fact that Blair still walks the streets unimpeded by the law.

““I was verbally assaulted by Khuram Butt one of the London Bridge killers the day after the brutal murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013. This took place on College Green, Westminster. Khuram Butt was with Anjem Choudhury the well known extremist and terrorist sympathiser.

“Khuram Butt called me a “Murtad” which means traitor in Arabic and accused me of being a government stooge when I confronted Anjem Choudhury about him supporting terrorism and my public campaign against Lee Rigby’s murder.

“The police turned up and Anjum, Khuram Butt and two other men were escorted away towards Millbank and I stayed in College Green.

“It is clear that Anjem Choudhury and his band of terrorist sympathisers were known to the Police for many years. Many of us in the British Muslim community have been demanding action against these extremists to no avail. I am not surprised that Khuram Butt carried out the terrorist attack and there are serious questions for the authorities.

“As in the Manchester terrorist attack, members of the Muslim community are reporting their suspicions about potential extremists which reinforces the strong links between the Muslim community and the police.

Maybe the reason why Diane Abbott does not bother to read anything or to understand anything is because she is content to allow Donald Trump to do her job for her.

In his latest tweet Trump states “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar – Look”

Those people who brought along a basketball for a game of darts immediately start sneering that Qatar is home to one of the largest US military bases. Trump wins his latest game of golf in straight sets.

It is a cruel, cruel world and in the big scheme of things no one cares about Bahrain.

Qatar now knows there is a price to pay for agreeing to sell gas to China in yuan – all hail the US$. This allows the fantasy to continue a little longer.

If the US gets kicked out of Qatar then I guess they will have to go home – and no-one can say Trump pulled them out. That this is the best hope there is shows how desperate the situation is.

Trump is playing a different game to everyone else and this causes mass confusion. When they finally work it all out then Trump probably goes the way of Kennedy. The real lesson is that Trump almost certainly knows this and manifestly does not give a shit and they will see no fear in his eyes.

“Senior NHS managers are discussing secret cost-cutting plans to be announced after the General Election – measures that one chief executive described as the most extreme and difficult to hit the health service they had ever seen. Extended waiting times, ward and service closures, and the withdrawal of public funding for some treatments are among the proposals in a new national savings drive designed to cap NHS spending, a leak has revealed. Health bosses have been told to “think the unthinkable” when devising measures to save money in their regions, according to the Health Service Journal (HSJ).”

It is the name of the governments anti radicalization strategy. It is not perfect and there are many criticisms that can be made of it, but for the moment it is all there is. Most people think that it is better than nothing.

Not all people think this. For example Professor Helen Marshall the Vice Chancellor of Salford University and who is paid £516,000 per year would appear to think that nothing is better than Prevent. Maybe she has formed this view as a consequence of information made available to her from Management consultants to whom the University paid £3.7 million.

Given that the person who blew up a pop concert in Manchester was a former student of Salford University then it might be an idea to force Professor Marshall to explain herself to the general public.

The Labour Party wants to scrap tuition fees – which might be a good idea. Obviously this would help students but what does it really do for society if at the same time you don’t go after this class of parasite who have questions to answer regarding their own culpability in allowing mass murderers to prowl their campuses unnoticed and unmolested by anyone.

Hurray, we don’t have to rely on our own terror incident to keep the Maggie may confident and talking tough, a plumber in Paris has just taken a hammer to a policeman, apparently a massive terror attack…..
watch the news going into hyperdrive

Why do you insist on calling Brexiters ‘racists’?
I have looked at what the EU is aiming for and I certainly don’t like it, Globalisation aka One World Government, is what they are pushing. We were forced to sell all our Industry, Transport and Utilities to Tory donors, who promptly off shored a great majority of it, totally destroying jobs here. At the same time dumbed down, educationally, teens were leaving school and wages were being suppressed.
Our ‘Economy’ relies on Debt for Growth, the ‘Central Bank’ system of creating money from Fresh Air every time a loan is made, requires us to rely on immigration, as we have 20m Economically In-Active [can’t get a loan]! (ONS Figures 16+ Working Population)
As people earn less they are obviously having to borrow more, which is the only reason we have a high GDP, as these ‘loans’ are ADDED to our GDP, false economy Ponzi Scheme.
I can see that our Services are being attacked by ever increasing immigrants, even though quite a lot of them actually ‘work’ in them, but this this is because of the first point, dumbed down, I made, linked to the fact of Austerity cuts! SOD ALL TO DO WITH RACISM, pure mathematics!
I hope Corbyn gets in and delivers his Public Bank alongside Sovereign money, as he stops banks from creating money from fresh air!

Not only is there hypocrisy at Westminster, but now Westminster’s favourite recipient of British arms, (boosted by dancing British royal puppets) Saudi Arabia, has the sheer and utter audacity to claim that a fellow Arab state is sponsoring terrorism.

Qatar, a long time ally of the Great Satan (consecutive US governments), which could put America in a quandry over its base in Qatar, has virtually been cut off from its neighbours, as seven countries severe diplomatic ties with it.

One of the seven is Bahrain, a oppressive state that David Cameron visited to sell British armaments, that were and still are used to quell any unrest among Bahrain’s denizens initiated the move. Qatari citizens have been given 14 days to leave the seven countries

Another of the seven needs no introduction, Saudi Arabia, which everyone knows is allowed to sponsor terrorism around the globe, due to its great wealth. Wealth that greedy western politicians and businessmen want to get their grubby hands on, that’s why the ruling Saudi elite carry on pushing their mantra unhindered by the west. Claimed that Qatar was trying to destablise the region using terrorist groups.

Coincidentally Trump visited its Golden Goose aka Saudi Arabia several weeks ago. Trump and king Salman, clutched a bright orb, in some sort of ritual, no doubt the subject of Qatar was spoken about in private. However it still puts US secretary of state Rex Tillerson, in a tricky position regarding Qatar/US relations.

Of course Saudi Arabia pointing the finger at any country over sponsoring terrorism. Is a bit like Israel claiming that the Palestinian people are terrorists because they want their lands back from the Israeli invading occupying forces-it won’t wash, however you look at it.

I was thinking in a more economic sense, it says to the EU, which we send around roughly 40% if our goods. Get it right up you we no longer need to trade with you, I doubt British business, will be pleased with the somewhat xenophobic effigy.

The level of delusion it requires for an ordinary person to believe Theresa May cares about their interests is frightening. Sadly, I fear that mass delusion is still prevalent enough to deliver another disastrous result for the UK on Thursday.

Why no interest in Met assistant commissioner Richard Quick turning round its counter terrorism during 2008-9 when the Blairites were losing control, and before the Tories started mimicing them, resulting in Quick either being fired, or just quitting?

Here’s another report. Shocking how this terrorists behaviour was given a free pass.
Anti-extremism organisation the Quilliam Foundation have said they reported London Bridge attacker Khuram Butt to counter-terrorism authorities almost a year before the deadly attack.

The terrorist became involved in a “violent scuffle” with the Quilliam Foundation’s Dr Usama Hasan at a July 2016 event to mark Eid, the end of Ramadan. The organisation said after reporting Butt they were “informed that Butt was already known to intelligence”.

Butt, who attended the event with his wife and young son, approached Dr Hasan, who was with his family, and accused him of being an apostate who took “government money to spy on Muslims”.
He also attacked him for supporting gay marriage and the idea that “we come from apes”.

A scuffle broke out and Butt lunged twice at D rHassan, said the organisation.

Quilliam chief executive Haras Rafiq said its report should have been taken more seriously as it came from a counter-terrorism group rather than a member of the public. He said:

Corbyn announces on his first day as PM he will condemn Trump for withdrawing from the Paris climate summit and for his comments about Khan! This shows he is prepared to embrace his enemies to get votes, because the climate scam is promoted by the globalists who are behind the relentless media bile against him and of course Khan stabbed him in the back and front the day he become Mayor.

1. A drop in global temperatures for some period of time to the level of 50 years ago or longer, without a clear cause.
2. A drop in global sea level for some period of time.
3. A strong rise or decline in the atmospheric CO2 level.
4. The discovery that climate forcings in the past were much larger, or temperature changes much smaller, than science thinks.
5. Warming of the stratosphere.
6. Major errors in equipment in satellites, measuring outgoing longwave radiation.
7. Evidence of a substantial fall of relative humidity with rising temperature.
8. A source of heat in the climate system that we do not know yet.
9. A fundamental flaw in the scientific understanding of radiation physics or thermodynamics.
10. CO2 molecules appear to behave differently in the wild, than they do in a laboratory.

Well, I actually found this and Craig Murray’s previous thread very interesting. I initially thought voting Labour where I live would be a wasted vote, but now absolutely everything is up in the air, partly due to local issues, but so far as I am concerned due to Foreign Policy – and the fact, that once our current MP gained a position of relative power, he did what I found almost completely unbelievable…Yet he did. He voted for war. He voted for the UK to bomb Syria, which was a complete and utter change from everything else he had done since being elected.

I think even, he knows he is history..

Most things can be forgiven, but voting for war in these circumstances is unforgivable. He may be brainwashed, but he certainly didn’t give any impression of lacking intelligence or integrity, until he switched from pacifist to warmonger.

Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, security services warned British involvement would increase the risk of retaliatory Terrorist attacks on the UK.

From 2003 to today security services have consistently said continued UK military action overseas will increase the terrorist threat to the UK .

The Russians and Chinese have warned that by crushing ISIS, if not managed properly , the result will be 100’000’s of fighters will attempt to get home, the result of that will be very many countries will be put at a massively greater risk of domestic terrorist attacks. The Russians don’t want the Chechens going home, the Chinese don’t want the Uighurs going home; they want them killed in the theater of war where they chose to fight. the US won’t let anyone return. The UK doesn’t have a plan.

The millions of refugees that have flooded Europe because of the US wars are coming here after seeing 100,000’s innocents (the old, infirm, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and friends brutally killed and maimed. Some of these people will hold hatred and vengeance in their hearts, that can only lead to further terrorist attacks..

So Craig is not right!

“People are not stupid, and by a two to one majority people believe that our wars abroad cause terrorism here.”

If the poll is correct and not fake then 47% of Britons polled are stupid which probably explains why we get the MP’s and governments that we do

I don’t watch BBC nor even BBC iplayer, except very occasionally, yet I answered the BBC’s interrogation honestly. Yes, I do have a TV licence. it may well be possible to wind iplayer back, but I have no idea how to do it. All I got was an article about Constable and Brighton, and then the usual dross. It made me feel sick, but it also answered Peter Beswick’s last sentence above “If the poll is correct and not fake then 47% of Britons polled are stupid which probably explains why we get the MP’s and governments that we do”.

In my view 47% of Britons are not stupid, or they wouldn’t be, if they stopped watching the propaganda on TV. Just bin it and buy a book. Even The Internet is not quite that bad yet. Do not trust these people. They are brainwashing you. TV literally switches off critical thought in your brain. They are pouring all this nonsense (mixed with a bit of truth) straight into your brain. You have no defence against it. You actualy trust these people. They are not telling you the truth.

Some sharp eyed people, who post here, and are not yet 94, notice these things..and also complain. You need to click on the link to read it. I think John Goss is reasonable safe.

Its difficult to not consider ourselves stupid when we consider the amount of money the security services spend collecting information on all of us, even pensioners whose only threat is outliving the equity value of their home when they come to need care, if they have a landline, mobile, internet and email, their communications and movements are logged. But when young fanatics go Jihadi and their communications and movements are logged then they are treated just the same as the lingering pensioners and my 88 year old mum.

Everything recorded, logged and sifted and then………? ………..Fuck all! Yes we had them on our watch list but we spent all our money collecting data on pensioners so when we detect a bad’un we don’t have the resource to do anything about it until they blow themselves up. That’s what the politicians want, that’s what we do!

But no I don’t think nearly all Britons are stupid per se but when we consider that we pick the politicians we do to take us into wars we don’t want, need or are justified and we pay security services to fuck about, then yes we are stupid.

I like you Tony grew up in Royton so we are between the Roughyheads and the Gawbys its no good coming from a proud heritage when the people we pay taxes to are hell bent on destroying our country.

Corbyn is flawed but honest and for me that is good enough, that’s why I voted out of the EU, I hadn’t done a critical analysis on the pros and cons I just knew I didn’t like what we had and I wanted to try something else. The Labour candidate won’t get in where I live but he will still get my vote, for now he appears to be honest.

Even Harold Wilson who I saw in Oldham Market in 1964 had little or no control over the Security Services. In fact they spent most of their time monitoring him. It would seem their power has grown exponentially since then, but their effectiveness at actually doing anything useful has got very much worse.

John Ward who went to school in Manchester, has a very interesting thread on this very subject now. Do you have a sister called Moira?

Sorry Tony won’t discuss family on a public board but I do have 2 sisters.

Security services are not fit for purpose. Correction not fit for the purpose that we are told they are there for, they don’t do the job that we pay their wages to do.

You will remember it was common knowledge where we lived that Cyril Smith was a “kiddy fiddler” as it was known then, only many yeas later did it become common knowledge that the police and special branch not only protected him and others but helped facilitate their wicked and deplorable pastime. Still many that are still alive are being protected.

When they die the awful truth doesn’t seem that important to protect anymore. Savile close to the Royals, Thatcher and many more of the elite, its not conceivable that Mi5 did not know and did not help him. We don’t pay them to do that.

What we once thought was the purpose of the security services and special branch intermediaries has been blown wide open time and time again for anyone who wants to see. Truly sickening!

It’s now known that in the 80’s more than half the IRA leadership were on the Mi5 payroll, not just the IRA, they were embedded on all sides including the Garda, the FBI got involved in the act too. FFS! why have they not been shut down? Mi5 assets were taking part in planning and carrying out murders in doing so creating greater divides !

As John Ward alludes to, our security services with police on behalf of their US counterparts covered up the circumstances of the death of Dr David Kelly. Mi6 chiefs Scarlett and Dearlove constructed false intelligence to justify Blair’s promise to help the US destroy the Middle East.

Senior police officers are political pawns as are security officers, they commit treachery at the behest of OBAMA industries; Oil, Banks, Arms, Military and Aerospace. It doesn’t stop there if you have the money Pharma’s, foundations and powerful lobbies get our security services to do their bidding as long as everyone is kept sweet. Except the public who pick up the bills.

That’s what May is offering to continue with, if Corbyn hits the line first and if he doesn’t wind his neck in quickly he could be going the same way as Kelly and Cook and many more.

A very very sick country is what Britain has become because our politicians are cowardly twats.

I agree with all of that, and it is all so sad. I couldn’t possibly have predicted it would all happen even 20 years ago. The full realisation for me came in February 2003. I was deeply suspicious in September 2001, but the full reality and implications didn’t hit me until nearly 18 months later. I marched in London with over 1 million other people, in an attempt to stop our country going to war in Iraq, but everything has simply got very much worse for everyone. Maybe people are now waking up. There are a few chinks of light, which give some hope for our grandchildren.

The failure to deal with certain groups is not due to political correctness, its because they’re state assets, just like ISIS, used to further the neo-con anti-Muslim narrative as part of the “war on terror for profit”. I call them rent-a-beard and its deliberately on purpose, like the recent events, they get extensive MSM coverage and are only dealt with when the Home Secretary wants a gets tough headline.

Well done Craig, you nailed it. I would be interested to know if you think it possible that May will be able to swallow sufficient amounts the mountain of bile pushed out by the odious DUP needed to get a working agreement. and if not, how soon the next general election?